Decatur Cemetery

Decatur Cemetery is a 58-acre municipal burial ground on the highest ground northeast of downtown Decatur, Georgia. Burials began by 1826, and the city took responsibility for it in 1832. The oldest section, about 7.5 acres, holds hand-carved pioneer stones, Victorian obelisks, draped urns and ornate iron-fenced lots. A southern portion includes an African-American section with distinctive cast concrete markers, a pauper burial area and graves of orphanage children. In 1881 the city carried out a landscape plan in the spirit of the rural cemetery movement, adding curving roads, granite walks, stairs, terraces, a wrought-iron fence with fieldstone piers and a lattice-detailed wooden well house, now used as a gazebo. Later additions were laid out by civil engineers and landscape architects, including William Pauley. The cemetery was listed for its funerary art, landscape design, community planning role and ethnic heritage. It remains an active cemetery and a public green space used by residents and office workers.